Senator Jeff Flake Sets Record for Drowning in the Potomac Waters

Sens. McCain, Graham, Rubio complicit, lured Flake in over his head

I'll try to remain respectful toward the office, but it'll be hard.  After all, the man is either lying to our faces or under the influence of Potomac Fever. He went from conservative Congressman to fellow-traveler in about three months. My statement is provoked by a column, supposedly written by Senator Jeff Flake, which appeared April 20 in the National Review Online, titled "The Conservative Case for Immigration Reform." In it, Flake attempts to explain his immigration bill and assuage our fears about it.  I suppose it goes without saying that I think he fails miserably. In fact, it reads like the junior high team got trounced by the senior varsity players (Sens. Schumer and Durbin). The perhaps worse alternative is that Rubio and Flake actually believe they've come up with a good bill. I'll provide you point-and-counterpoint to the end.

Senator Flake, this is really for your benefit, so I address my comments to you.

First paragraph:

"What I never expected was that Senator Rubio and I would be working on immigration-reform legislation with liberals like Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Dick Durbin (D., Ill.)."

Neither did we, Senator, neither did we. It's not what we elected you to do.

Second:

"While conservatives are justified in their skepticism of any legislation that Senators Schumer and Durbin sign off on, I hope we don’t let their association with the bill that is now before the Senate overshadow the conservative elements that Republicans have included."

Gee, do you think so? Do you realize you just said our skepticism is justified? That may be the most completely honest statement in the column. Maybe you should be a little more skeptical. And it doesn't really matter that there may be some "conservative elements" in the bill, because it is loaded with anti-conservative elements.

"It requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to develop a “Comprehensive Southern Border Security Strategy” and appropriates $3 billion to implement the plan.... DHS is also required to develop the “Southern Border Fencing Strategy,” with $1.5 billion.... if they do not achieve a 90 percent effectiveness rate within five years (meaning that 9 of every 10 illegal border crossers is apprehended), another $2 billion will be spent to implement recommendations from a commission of border stakeholders, who, for the first time, will have meaningful authority to increase border security."

So, now we know it requires that a lot of money be spent ($4.5B), and if it doesn't work at "a 90 percent effectiveness rate within five years," even more will be spent ($2B) to ask somebody called "border stakeholders" what they think should be done. Here's a suggestion.  Why don't you ask them first, and save five years? And shouldn't the DHS already have a comprehensive strategy to protect our southern border? Isn't that already the law? Isn't that part of their job?

And just how do we determine that we are catching 9 out of 10 illegal border crossers? Do they check out of Mexico as they leave, so that we have a count of the total number and can thereby tell when we've caught 90% of them? Seems to me that otherwise, by definition, if we don't catch them, we don't know how many we didn't catch, which would mean we can't calculate the percentage caught. (I have a degree in physics, so I know how math and percentages work. You need both a numerator and a denominator.)

Or do we just use the same people who tell us that the census is x% undercounted in urban Hispanics and y% undercounted in rural Chechnyans, and therefore another Democrat Congressman was cheated out of his seat? Is that the "border security" you have so sincerely promised we would have before there is "no" amnesty?  And I thought Barack Obama was the expert on smoke and mirrors.

Whew.  Almost halfway through. Let's continue.

"This bill ensures that no illegal immigrant will be given amnesty or rewarded for illegal behavior. In fact, no illegal immigrant will be “given” anything.

Before any illegal immigrant can adjust to a non-citizenship provisional status, DHS must have submitted the border-security and border-fencing strategies."

Did you actually write that?  After the strategies have been submitted, then the change in status (called Registered Provisional Immigrant, or RPI) can occur?  Not after the border is secure, but only after DHS has submitted a "strategy," which probably won't even work? And they are definitely "given" the right to stay here legally, which is exactly what they crossed the border illegally to get in the first place (did I get that right, Associated Press?). Can it be any clearer that this is a complete renunciation of your promise of Border Security First, then legalization? (These issues have been covered in more detail by Daniel Horowitz here and here and here.)

"Only then will these immigrants be able to legally work in the country — but they will not be eligible for government assistance (unemployment, welfare, Obamacare, etc.)."

Just one sentence here to point out that this prohibition will last just long enough for the first RPI status immigrant's ACLU lawyer to get his briefs to the right federal courthouse, where a sympathetic judge will declare that it mandates "unequal treatment under the law" and is therefore a no-no to be ignored. To continue--

"Moreover, to be eligible for this non-citizenship provisional status, illegal immigrants must pay a $500 fine, pass a background check, and pay fees."

As almost anybody might say, Big Whoop. In fact, total fines under the bill are only $2000. Considering that some of the RPI's will have been here perhaps twenty years, that isn't much. And about the background check--we are told that we don't have the resources to deport any of these people, yet we do have the resources to carry out background checks on all of them? Are they going to work for the FBI? Give me a break! This is unworkable on its face, especially given that there will be millions more streaming over the border with false documents to "prove" they were already here in 2011.

Furthermore, we are told (when it's convenient) that "half of the illegally overstaying foreigners came in on student visas." Will they get to apply for RPI status, too? Why? What do you plan to do with those of any stripe who don't apply for RPI status at all?

"Only after ten years can these provisional-status immigrants apply for a green card (which is still short of U.S. citizenship). In order to earn a green card, they will have to pay all back taxes, maintain employment in the U.S., learn English and civics, and wait until everyone who applied for a green card before them has been processed. It will likely be close to 13 years before current illegal immigrants begin to become eligible for citizenship."

It sounds draconian, until you realize that all these poor, unfortunate RPI's will have spent those years waiting and working here in the US of A, which, I repeat, is exactly what they crossed the border illegally to do in the first place. And they get to do it legally, neither of which the prospective immigrants who followed the law could do, because they are still where they started, not here.

"Conservatives worried that President Obama or Secretary Napolitano will be able to expedite the legalization sections of the bill while dragging their feet on border security should consider that the border-security measures come first, while the status-adjustment portions of the bill will take many years. It’s also worth noting that it’s likely that this process will occur under both Democratic and Republican administrations."

But we have just shown that the only border security measures the bill demands before legalization are strategies, not real security-creating actions. And there is absolutely nothing that will make a President Obama enforce the parts of the law he doesn't like (he isn't enforcing those parts now), nor is there anything that would keep a future Democrat President and Congress from changing the law, either.  Of course that is true of any law, but if the physical border security infrastructure is already installed before amnesty, it will be harder for them to say, "We just don't have the resources to secure the borders now, but we can do the status adjustments," because the physical barriers will already be in place. Unfortunately, technological fences can be dismantled with an order or a flip of a switch.

"I think we can all agree that the status quo is unacceptable, and I’m convinced that this legislation moves us in a positive direction."

Again, Senator, no. The only thing wrong with the status quo is that the Democrats beat you like a drum with it, because like a drum, you are flat on your backs. That, and the fact that the border is too sieve-like to protect us from any serious foreign threat carrying a small nuclear, chemical, or biological weapon. And it doesn't keep out drug cartels or illegally-crossing foreigners, either. So fix that part, then come back to ask what you should do about "status adjustments." That's why those of us who are serious about solving the problem, not placating a pressure group, have insisted from the first that we shouldn't even talk about anything else until the border is truly secure. This bill is NOT an improvement.

ps. I'm insulted that you think we are stupid enough to think this is good law. Today, your credibility level stands at zero. IF you and Senator Rubio were to renounce this bill today and remove your names from it, admitting you were turned every which way but loose by the other six Senators in your gang, and pledge to fight its passage, you MIGHT have a SLIM chance to redeem yourselves. Forget about the top of the ticket, but you MIGHT get re-elected to the Senate. If the bill passes, no chance at all. That may turn out to be wrong, but it's honest advice.

Cross-posted at RedState.

Brief and Direct: Is Marriage a Right or a Rite?

How can a right require the continuing agreement and support of another person?

Another in a sporadic series of short commentaries on current events

Marriage Equality?

"Marriage Equality" is a recently-coined euphemism for "gay marriage," which is itself a euphemism as well. Our tender psyches apparently don't respond well to euphemisms that get too close to saying what they mean, especially in advocacy advertising. Still, it's a great phrase that conveys exactly what its proponents want to convey--that everybody has a right to marry the spouse of his or her choice, gay or straight: marriage equality! The advertisements are superbly crafted.

I won't go into the arguments that support that position; you've heard them all before. But all those arguments apply equally well to numbers greater than two. And if you believe that there is a Constitutionally protected "right" to marry  whomever you choose, you must also agree that the same right applies to marriages between more than two people. Logically, the connection is undeniable. If the right exists, to restrict it to two people we would have to find specific language in the Constitution that does so, and there is no such language.

So is it a right?

An argument can be made that marriage is NOT a right because it imposes a burden on someone else to fulfill it, not just one time but on a continuing basis; that is, the other partner has to be willing to marry also. If we had a right to marry, we could just pick out a spouse and say, "Tag, you're it," and it certainly wouldn't require approval from a government to do so. A right either exists or it doesn't; it can't depend on the continuing agreement and support of another person to exist, as does a "right to marry." I believe that argument is a compelling one, but a court might disagree.

I believe what we really have is a right to remain single, and a process exists to enter into marriage if we can find a qualifying and willing spouse. That the government has butted into the process is just a complication, but it's a big one, because it has granted many special privileges, and some penalties, to people who are married.

What does "marriage" mean?

Or perhaps, why does marriage mean what it means, and who gets to change the definition? Or more specifically, who gets to decide who qualifies as a spouse? Is it a court? A statewide initiative? A legislature? A church?

Those questions have been all tangled up by our over-reaching government which has created onerous laws and wants to mitigate their effects on married couples, and those laws use the terms "husband," "wife," "spouse," and "marriage" in legal definitions, mostly in tax law, but in contract and business law as well, and in the most obvious case--in insurance and employment benefit plans. Thus, calls to "get the government out of the marriage business," are way too simplistic to provide a real resolution to our current debate. The legal changes required are probably even greater than those that would be needed to overturn ObamaCare. But it's hard to argue that anybody but the government gets to define what a legal marriage is, and that includes setting rules as to what minimally constitutes a qualified spouse. Setting a minimum age for marital consent is one example that varies among states.

The societal changes might require even more effort, if decreed by the government, because marriage is more than a legal state, it's a social institution, a moral convention, a state of being. People who are married are expected both by society and by the law to behave in certain minimal ways. Sometimes people are treated, even legally, as if they had been formally married simply because they behave that way. And there is probably plenty of societal support for the legal concept of civil unions, because they attempt to bring some order and fairness to the chaos created by governmental marriage privileges. But the social definition of marriage is defined primarily by societal norms and common usage. Its history is thousands of years old, so naturally there is resistance to change, even resistance to changing a legal definition. And there isn't a requirement that it have the same definition as the legal one.

Conclusion?

If marriage is determined by the Supreme Court to be a "right" rather than a "rite," many unwanted consequences will logically follow. Courts will have more and more decisions they won't want to make, and it will never be resolved. But if it bypasses that trap and allows the decision to remain in state hands (overturning the 9th Circuit and lower federal courts at the same time), without creating a right to marry, it eliminates it as a federal judicial problem. Still a federal legislative and executive problem, perhaps, but it will be clear that there is no Constitutional requirement to federally define or even deal with marriage at all.

This doesn't solve the Defense of Marriage Act quandary (that's a separate issue, and it's either Constitutional or not), but it would allow states to define a marriage as they see fit, as could the US Congress, to apply to laws where it is necessary. But the definition could be anything that makes sense, for the state or for the US.

Naturally, this won't satisfy many people. The demand for "Marriage Equality" isn't a logical one, it's a legal and emotional one. But civil unions could and should be readily available in all states, legal constructs that should confer the same legal rights on the participants that marriages do, for more reasons than those put forth by gay-marriage proponents. What is the demand that they be called "marriages" about, anyway? An emotional, subjective, and extra-Constitutional plea for "fairness." Without a justifiable civil right to marry, we are left with only a demand that society change its opinion, and that can't be decreed by a court.

What a court decision affirming California's Proposition 8 will do is allow the voice of the people to count, and for other voices to be heard either directly or through their representatives, and it will mean the final decision is a popular one rather  than one decreed by a court of nine judges.  If "marriage" is not a "right," there will be far fewer reasons for federal courts to intervene in state business.  Better for the Court, and better for the unruly civil union called The United States of America.

A shorter version of this argument is posted at RedState.

Brief and Direct: Why are Firemen Always the First To Be Laid Off?

After garbage workers, that is.

Another in an unscheduled series of short commentaries on current events

Maybe because we'll miss them the most.

Because the President has forgotten he's already been elected and he's been campaigning across the country to defeat his own idea, there are too many sources to quote regarding the dire consequences President Obama sees if the sequester, or Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA), isn't averted. So without individual attribution here are some of the services we will lose.

Local first responders--fire, police, EMS.

Teachers.

Military "readiness" and "preparedness."

Airport security and TSA.

Homeland Security. Border Patrol.

FEMA, FDA, NASA.

(Wait a minute, wasn't NASA killed last year?  Here's one that's for sure going to save money: the National Drug Intelligence Center, still slated for a $2 million cut to a $20 million dollar budget. But it was closed on 6/15/2012. Why does it need a budget?)

FBI, NRC, the federal prison system, SEC.

Sounds awful, until we notice that these "cuts" come out of a budget that's already scheduled to increase more than the cuts amount to. And that Republicans have offered to give the President emergency authority to allocate these cuts in ways that are "least harmful."

The basic insincerity of the President is clear if you just cast a skeptical eye on these threats. The threats always target services that the federal government has at least some legitimate reason to be involved in, never mentioning pork barrel programs whose elimination would hardly be noticed by anybody who doesn't lose a job as the result. And why should anybody elsewhere lose a job, at least because of the sequester? There will still be more money available than there was last year. At worst, we're talking about simply holding the line against expansion of government.

This is the most transparent administration, ever, at least in this case. It's transparently obvious that the President's aim is to scare the gullible. You don't scare them by threatening to cut off funding to a study of the hare-brained snail darter, you scare them by saying they won't have police or fire service.

This has been standard operating procedure for years. The lists at city and state level usually include no more garbage pickups, no road repairs (and maybe the President mentioned those services, too). I wouldn't even be surprised to see them threaten to cut out Saturday mail delivery.

Cross-posted at RedState.

Brief and Direct: Dr. Carson's Inspiring Idea

What Republicans can learn from Dr. Benjamin Carson

Another in an unscheduled series of short commentaries on current events

Setting the stage

Dr. Benjamin Carson ruffled some feathers with his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast a couple of weeks ago. You can't blame the Left for being ruffled--the speech was a High Right Fastball under the chin. They didn't like anything he said, and they didn't like the way he said it. They didn't like it that President Obama had to sit through it, and they really didn't like the fact that it was delivered by a black man who had studied and worked and achieved his way up from the worst kind of poverty to become the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md.

Some on the Right ignored both the message and the messenger and concentrated on the event, choosing to be offended by the fact that Dr. Carson delivered a 'political' message at the prayer breakfast. To mention just one example, Cal Thomas, writing in syndication and online, sniffed that Dr. Carson's criticisms of the President's policies had been "inappropriate for the occasion."

"If Carson wanted to voice his opinion about the president’s policies, he could have done so backstage. Even better, he might have asked for a private meeting with the man."

He was joined in his opinion by several other Conservatives of repute. Technically, they were right, but that's the kind of technicality that has been relegating Republicans to 'back row, right,' in pictures of important political and news events since Ronald Reagan left the White House.

Inspiration

The inspiring idea I want to point out has nothing to do with the content of Carson's remarks, accomplishments, or his life, inspiring as they were and are. His inspiration was to do just what Thomas and the entire Left say he shouldn't have done--use an 'inappropriate' venue to deliver a conservative message.

I've beaten this dead horse into glue before: If nobody hears our message, we might as well not have one. We must make our statements in ways and places that can't be ignored or marginalized. Had Dr. Carson followed Cal Thomas' advice, nobody would have known about it. More important, nobody else would have heard his conservative ideas.

I may be wrong, but I'd bet that Dr. Carson has given the same speech to local groups before, yet nobody knows it. If you Google search for 'dr benjamin carson,' you get about 12 million hits. Of those, about 5.5 million are references to his speech at the breakfast. Draw your own conclusions, but I believe there are a lot of people who now know not only who he is, but what he said that morning and that there is more to the story than simply what the President and all his men tell us.

Further, millions more heard him and heard about him on television and radio, and had a chance to hear his message without a media filter. Perhaps even more important, millions of people heard or saw a non-political, highly educated, brilliant and talented professional black civilian deliver a speech promoting conservative values in a reasonable and thoughtful manner, and he didn't grow horns or fangs, and after it was all over the MSM didn't even try to rebut his words or reasoning, only his location. None of that would have happened had he chosen an 'appropriate' venue for his presentation.

The end justifies the means

Most conservatives don't like that phrase and we tend to oppose the idea, but it really depends on how distasteful the means are and how vital the end is. Dr. Carson balanced the two and delivered a speech that may have broken some rules but which was covered by most of the popular press, and the only spin they could generate was that it was "inappropriate for the occasion."

I don't suggest that Dr. Carson had any of these strategies in mind. There's no reason to believe he did anything other than deliver a speech that he thought was completely apropos, and he says so. 

Whether he intended to make two kinds of statements that morning or not, he gave us an example that should be inspiring to Republicans, conservative or not. Get your message ready and when you deliver it, make it count by forcing the the MSM to both report it and report it accurately. The truth is always appropriate, but if it's spoken in a manner, time, and place that the MSM is forced to report it, it's even better.

Needed next: Ways to make this happen every week.

For another take on the Cal Thomas column, check out Chicks On The Right.

Cross-posted at RedState.

Brief and Direct: Sequestration Needs to Happen

Nobody can agree on the small things, but EVERYTHING needs to be cut

Sequestration is to arrive soon, allegedly to the surprise of the President, the Democrats, and the popular press. According to at least one source in that popular press, if sequestration is allowed to take effect there will be numerous programs and services to the public curtailed. Other sources, such as Chris Cillizza of WaPo, provide a less pessimistic view.

A good President would seize this opportunity to shrink the deficit a little bit by cutting spending in areas that he normally wouldn't get a chance to touch, and to build some bridges to the other party. A poor one will use it as a campaign talking point.

You have probably heard him say that Republicans don't care about all the problems the sequester will bring on, they just don't want taxes raised on their rich friends--even though they already allowed taxes to go up on those friends in January, but never mind about that. The fact is, some of us do think they should let it happen, but not for that reason.

First, I don't see sequestration as causing a big problem for the country, although depending on how President Obama decides to implement it there can be significant hardships for certain groups of people. But that's already been happening for four years. This will mostly just be a different group of people, but the relatively small size of the sequester should allow a good administrator to work around it with minimal disruption of operations, or even none, if he wants to.

Second, Sequestration has been called using a meat ax to do what should be done with a scalpel. Here's what's wrong with that characterization: Our overspending problem needs an ax taken to it, whether meat or lumberjack's. Scalpels have been tried in the past, as have butcher and even Bowie knives, but it never works because opposing sides can never agree upon enough of what to pare. In the end, the hearings to decide what to cut cost more than what is saved IF anything ends up being cut at all.

Third, the attractive thing about sequestration is that the decisions have already been made. EVERYTHING will be cut. Well, almost half of everything, anyway. But sacred cows will bleed, even if it will only be flesh wounds, and even though they won't be deep enough to do any real fiscal good in the end. The good will come from the post-mortem that will follow the fact. The world will not end, and if the Republicans can hold their nerve they will have won a real victory from which to launch the next assault on overspending.

A. B. Stoddard of The Hill suggested Wednesday on Fox Special Report that Republicans should take "a third bite of the apple" with the Democrats and compromise on sequestration, going along with the President and cutting spending down the road. I guess the first bite would have been the negotiations to raise the debt ceiling the last time with a promise of a 'grand bargain' that was scuttled by President Obama at the last moment in favor of his sequester plan, and the second was the tax rate increase passed last month in return for spending cuts (which are unspecified and will not happen). Not being a conservative, A. B. believes that this time the football will NOT be pulled away, and spending cuts will pass later.

No. This is a chance to actually do something rather than merely talk about what we intend to do. This situation is analogous to our illegal immigration situation. This is why conservatives demand that the border be secured first before we even talk about next steps. If decisions are made that satisfy liberal demands first, they will never support border security.

Democrats always insist that we do what they want first, then at some point in the future they'll reward us with what we want. Only it never happens. Although Republicans seem never to learn, if they hold firm here, there may be some hope left. They need to earn respect by standing by their own principles, allowing sequestration, and facing the consequences of "reduced" spending like responsible legislators.

Cross-posted at RedState.

Maybe It's the Undisciplined Messaging and Messages

In response to Ben Howe's 

It’s the Messaging, Stupid. It’s the Stupid Messaging.

More than the messengers? I mostly agree. 

[D]umb, ill-prepared and gaffe-tastic candidates will always be a part of American politics. You don’t win by making a strategy that consists of preventing people you think are too dumb en masse from picking a candidate. You win by effectively selling your ideas.

Yes. To every pundit who has appeared on TV to say we can't continue to nominate candidates who say dumb things, I say that Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin were both seasoned politicians who had been elected to office many times previously. Did anybody out there know in advance they'd each make one public statement that bordered on the insane, at least AS SPUN BY THE MSM? They were indeed dumb statements to make, but were they predictable? More predictable was our Republican response, to abandon them to the open sea, rather than to defend them as merely victims of their own tongues who really meant, [insert whatever NEEDED to be said, even if it had to be precisely the opposite of what actually WAS said.  Democrats do this all the time.] But the fact that they did say them illustrates a different problem with the GOP--they had no help in learning how to handle the press and its gotcha questions.

We, as the low-tax & personal responsibility party cannot waltz into a low income housing area, look around, shake our heads and say “Hey, when are you guys going to stop being idiots and voting for people that think you’re stupid — also, you don’t pay enough taxes."

Whether or not we view that as what happened, the people we’re talking to certainly did.

Actually, that isn't even close to what was said. But it's metaphorically what was reported and repeated in the media WITHOUT REFUTATION. I know it's lame to say, "But he didn't say THAT," but it's even lamer to say "We agree with you and we're denouncing the scoundrel." There ARE other things to say and do.

Of course, it’s not only messaging. There’s the issue of policy perscritpions[sic] that run counter to our alleged shared beliefs. As Michelle Malkin pointed out, Rove played a major role in “disastrous Medicare prescription drug entitlement expansion that created an unfunded liability of $9.4 trillion over the next 75 years, No Child Left Behind federal education expansion, steel tariffs, ag subsidies, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.”

Right, again. Had Rove and W. not done some of those things, we might still have a 2-term Obama, and he might even have had more support. But we Republicans would have been spared the countless claims that we had added to the debt as much as all previous administrations combined, and we would have had some credibility as we tried to take on the mantle of the Small(er) Government, Fiscal Responsibility Party in 2012. Maybe a few more Tea Partiers would have voted for us instead of Ron Paul or Gomer Pyle on TVLand. We might have even gotten some Democrat votes.

As the headline says, “It’s the messaging, stupid. It’s the stupid messaging.”

...You have to do more than be right. You have to convince people you are right.

...Somehow we’re failing to convince people that keeping more of their paycheck and affording them less government interference in their lives is a good thing. “Don’t blame the messenger” just doesn’t apply here. The messenger is without a doubt the problem.

That's the right track, but there is more to it.  There is also a problem with the listener. If he is predisposed to reject the messenger, the message, no matter who delivers it, will not have any effect, because it won't be heard. The exception is if the speaker can capture the voter's interest and hold on to it long enough to break down that barrier.

Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute makes a strong case that we have a huge cultural hurdle to overcome--Republicans are looked upon as selfish (and Democrats are considered to be generous, or selfless) by too many people, and they don't want to listen to a "selfish" message from a "selfish" Republican, which is exactly what a message of self-reliance and independence sounds like if you only hear a little bit of it.

That's a big reason why they "like" Obama better than they "like" us in the polls, even though they tend mostly to agree with our ideas rather than with Democrat ideas, when they hear them from a pollster.  And as Rush Limbaugh has been pointing out this week, the Democrat ideas simply don't stick to Obama.

They're predisposed to dismiss us and our ideas before they even hear us, so they don't hear us.

Obviously, this won't change in one election cycle, but it's a key problem that needs to be considered as our great speakers deliver our not-really-selfish message to the people we need to convince to listen to us and then believe us. So I guess I agree in the end--it's the stupid, no, undisciplined, unfocused and inadequate messaging and messages (not the principled message itself) that we have to modify to enable the ideas and solutions to be heard, no matter who the messenger is.

Brief and Direct: An Answer from the Ayn Rand Institute

How is it possible that we lose to Democrats?

Perhaps you have been asking yourself that question. After all, we win the debate on all the big issues, as verified by polls as recently as today, with questions in the form of "Do you agree with President Obama on...?" The majority of respondents don't agree with him on anything except defense in general, while they disagree with his specific policies, including those regarding defense.

The Flagstaff Tea Party was host last week to Yaron Brook, Executive Director and President of the Ayn Rand Institute. He spent over an hour answering the question, "Why are we losing?" not just the most recent election, but the war for public opinion for the last fifty years or so. The answer is intuitively obvious once revealed, but it doesn't easily convert to a sound bite, so we don't hear it in the popular media (nor would it be helpful if we did). And it involves cultural psychology.

Self-interest vs. selflessness

Our culture teaches us to revere those who give of themselves (the selfless ones), and to scorn those who make a lot of money (the self-interested ones), at least until they start to give it away. Although we suspend those prejudices when we go to work ourselves, we still hold them and apply them to public figures, including political candidates, so when one party convinces "us" that it's the party that gives to the needy, and ours is the party that says we can't afford to keep doing it that way, guess who wins. The subconscious prejudice frequently overwhelms logic, especially when we don't point out that our principles will make it easier to help the truly needy than theirs will, that self-interest promotes the public good far more than altruism does..

I note the parallel question, "How can President Obama's personal approval ratings be so high when his policies are all unpopular?" This wasn't addressed by Brook, but it has the same answer. Why is President Obama looked upon as "likable," while Mitt Romney has been called "unlikable," to say the least? It isn't all because of the advertising hatchet-job Obama's campaign ran against Romney.

A brief comparison of the two men: Barack Obama has had a career in politics, preceded by a stint as a lecturer at the university level and a job as community organizer. He had no experience that relates to making hard decisions or even of doing the hard work of being President. He was never highly compensated until he was elected to political office. He was Constitutionally qualified to become President. He is a Democrat.

Mitt Romney is almost precisely the opposite. He has worked in profit-making concerns since he was young (excepting his Mormon mission time), even while starting his family and going to college. He ran his own company and was compensated well enough to be considered rich, to become Governor of Massachusetts, and to run for President. He was prepared by experience to be President. He is a Republican.

Each epitomizes his party as it is connoted in the public mind, and that is the key to Brook's answer--we are losing because the Republican Party is perceived to be the party of self-interest, frequently morphed into selfishness. The Democrat Party is perceived as the party of selflessness.  Selfish Republican Romney loses to selfless Democrat Obama in the hearts of enough voters to make the difference.

To close out my presidential metaphor, we couldn't have had two more stereotypical candidates running for office last time if we had tried, and our society is predisposed to prefer both the image and the facts of Obama over those of Romney, even though both the image and the facts are misleading. The attributes we liked in candidate Romney were much less highly regarded by the general population, and the baggage they carried with them hurt him.

What can we do about it?

Brook admitted it will take time to change a cultural norm, but a start would be for our side to start standing up publicly for our own principles. For those principles that would make it hard for a politician to explain during a race, let our non-politicians talk about them.

The left has been using this tactic against us for years; we should be following their example of success.